So I've been introducing guineapiglet to a cup slowly but surely over the last month or so. She seems to have the basic dynamics of it down but, of course, water ends up everywhere when we do it - which is actually just fine with me. I'm starting to feel pressure to give her a sippy cup even her teacher gave a gentle nudge that it might be time for her to bring a sippy cup to school to practice with but my gut is telling me to skip this step and just continue to let her practice on real cups.

What are your thoughts on sippy cups? Are they necessary or did you do just fine without them?

I got the Safe Sippy (thanks JENNA!), even though Leela LOVES drinking from cups, just so I could have something portable and easy to give her a little water from without having to change her whole outfit when she excitedly pours the glass all over herself.

She loves drinking from cups. If I have a cup and won't share, she looks offended and betrayed, and I get this exasperated "Mooooooooooooooooom!" look. It is so cute, I could bottle it.

I would say, you don't have to give it to her, if that doesn't feel right to you, but for me, it was $14 and worth having around. She drinks from it, but doesn't love it like she loves cups.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

from what my speech path friends tell me, it's better to have kids use a straw than a sippy cup (in terms of strengthening muscles for speech). Of course cups with a lid and straw aren't as spill proof as a sippy cup.

I think somebody on here is a speech path and can say whether the straw vs sippy cup thing actually makes much of a difference or only matters if that's the only thing a kid is drinking from.

I'm not a speech pathologist but as a teacher I strongly discourage sippy cups; I think they just put off the inevitable spills, rather than prevent them. Every kid I know who used one has had a very hard time transitioning to an open cup. They just douse themselves because they're not expecting a rush of liquid.

Then again, they do have their place, like car trips and stuff like that.

My thing with sippy cups depends on how they are used. If they have milk or other sweet beverages and they are sipping on them, it is bad for their teeth. If it is water that's okay. It's just sometimes kids will sip for a long time, which is a lot of sugar exposure for the teeth. I also here that straw cups are better, but like chiveggie said, straw cups are better (though still an issue if they are carrying it around). It is supposed to be a mealtime only thing unless it has water.

I ordered the safe sippy! Thanks tofulish! We use the doidy cup to teach grey to drink from a regular cup as well as regular cups. He has a couple sippy cups with straws but they are plastic and it makes me nervous when they sit in the sun and then he uses them. He also has regular sippy cups. We mostly just give him water since he is still breastfeeding. I gave him coconut water when he was having diarrhea at one point and once in a while he gets soy milk.

I've been researching the safe sippy and the tilty cup but I'm still not sure. Guineapiglet is still only tasting food (although when it comes to anything beany she's eating large quantities) so she doesn't need to drink water yet as she's still nursing the same amount as she was before we introduced solids. I could see how a sippy would be helpful when she's older and eating full meals and needs hydration on the go but we've got a while for that.

I can see the value in her learning to drink from a straw but my gut is still telling me to stay away from sippy's so that's probably what we're going to do. Since the safe sippy has a straw we might get that and I think the tilty cup would be great to use without the sippy top to teach her how to drink from a cup and I could always throw the top on it when she's a toddler and we're on the go.

We skipped sippy cups, but straw cups are great for us because he will drink so much more milk or water through a straw than from a regular cup. Straws are neater than regular cups for when you're away from home. My 2 cents.

E did normal cups first and then a sipping top on a water bottle when he was older/drinking water more often on the go. (Still used a cup at home.) When the sippy top broke when he was maybe 2.25, we didn't replace it. Everybody lived.

Eta: by normal I mean an open top. He actually used a shot glass at first.

I started Kai on a cup (green sprouts 2 handled one) and he was always able to drink from it, but would end up turning it over and dumping it all over himself every time. So we started using these straw cups (because I also read the thing about it being better for speech) and love them. They don't leak at all when they're closed, and just a bit if he shakes it around when it is open. I've heard they're hard to clean by hand, but they come out of the dishwasher just fine.I don't know if it has anything to do with it, but I will say he speaks pretty clearly for a 21 month old.

He still loves drinking out of cups, so I'll let him do it if I know he's going to take a bath, and in the bath so he doesn't drink the bathwater. (he fills it up under the tub faucet and drinks. amazing how much fun he thinks this is!) He still dumps it on himself when he uses one in the high chair though.

_________________I'm not asking for utopian dreams...just a little peace in this world. That's a logical thing. - Deee-Lite

We always did normal (open top) cups with our childcare kids. Freya's got a free-flow sippy, where it has holes but no stopper or anything and that's what she uses mostly. We leave the cap off sometimes too. We do have a suck-on-it type one too, but we've not used it yet. Thought it might be nice for our journeys but the flip-top Tommee Tippee has worked well so far. The Doidy cup and similar are great. I've only been able to find one here at this store we call "The Snooty Baby Store" and it's insanely expensive. Going to look for one when we're Stateside.

we had no problem with sippies. i think it's kind of weird to say that they cause problems, tbh. we still have a few in our cupboard, but tzipi was always able to use a sippy, straw cup, and regular cup (either small sized or adult sized) interchangeably.

i use them for her occasional chocolate milk treat at home, and if we are at a big gathering where there are lots of kids and drinks floating around. we have a straw cup too, and i find the spill proof straw cup annoying because it is hard to clean, and regular straw cups annoying because she either pulls the straw out and flicks it around or they aren't spill proof. if we are sitting at the table eating dinner together, she uses a regular cup. if she is drinking something while watching a movie or while we have a playdate, we break out the spill-proof cups because she can still get lazy or careless with an open cup.

i dunno. just seemed like it was super easy and no big deal to teach her to use multiple different kinds of drinking containers, and she loses her stuff so often that i'm not going to buy some super expensive fancy cup. right now she mostly uses the cheap bpa-free free-flow sippies from the grocery store, plastic kid sized cups from ikea, and my straw top water bottle.

I don't really follow how a sippy would be worse for speech development than nursing/bottle feeding, as it's pretty much the same thing, no? E did used to have a Nuby cup-- that was between shot glasses and the water bottle-- and it was pretty nippular.

My thing with sippies was just a laziness thing... I didn't want to have to keep track of one more piece of crepe if I didn't have to.

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 6025Location: United States of New England

i dont think sippy cups were invented when i was growing up.i think that after i was old enough to handle a cup on my own the pre-cursor to sippy cups came out. a tupper ware sippy top that you stuck on a regular cup (i remember only having them on plastic cups, not sure if that is only what they fit on or if i wasnt old enough to be trusted with glass)

for some bizarre reason i like watching Nanny 911 and shows like that and it always seemed like sippy cups were like seen as down right evil to the nannies. they would go through peoples' houses and throw out bags and bags full of sippy cups.i think usually the people had their kids using sippy cups way past an appropriate age.

several months after i had major surgery on my jaw i was mainly healed but still had numbess in my lower lip and chin related to the surgery and i dumped coffee on myself literally 3-4 times daily. finally someone bought me an adult sippy cup.

I don't really follow how a sippy would be worse for speech development than nursing/bottle feeding, as it's pretty much the same thing, no?

I don't have any comment about speech development, but at least for getting cavities, part of the issue is that people don't think about sippy cups as the same as a bottle when they pretty much are, and they let them suck on them most of the day with kool aid or milk or juice in them. Most people (not all) know not to do this with a bottle, but not necessarily a sippy cup.

Here is a older WSJ article on speech development and dental issues with sippy cups. L only gets water in hers at the moment, and only when she is drinking (no running around with it hanging out of her mouth).

some speech pathologists say children are using sippy cups long after they should have made the transition to a traditional, lidless cup. They're still sucking and slurping when they ought to be swilling and gulping. The consequence: a lazy tongue that produces sloppy "th" and "st" sounds, at least temporarily. Nursery-school teachers were among the first to raise concerns.

"What we've noticed in the past five or six years is that articulation for young children has totally disappeared," says Gail Smith, director of the Gingham Giraffe Preschool in Chatham, N.J. "And I directly attribute it to the use of sippy cups."

Ms. Smith first heard about the concerns from a speech therapist. Before warning parents at her nursery school to ditch the cups, she took one home and drank from it herself for a weekend. She became concerned that sucking a sippy cup was a lot like sucking a thumb. "You do tend to leave your tongue under the cup," she says.

Most children who develop speech difficulties after drinking from sippy cups are easily cured, says Ms. Johnson. Their speech usually improves as soon as they begin drinking from other vessels. But for children with Down Syndrome or other illnesses that weaken the facial muscles, these problems can be longer lasting. In those cases, she prescribes a series of exercises in which children gradually switch from sippy cups to straws to regular cups.

Yet while Ms. Johnson spreads the word, others in the field of speech maintain that the sippy-cup debate is a lot of crying over unspilled milk.

"I can't imagine how they could be a problem," says Christopher A. Moore, professor of speech and hearing sciences at the University of Washington. "It's an anecdotal observation that's not supported by research."

In fact, says Dr. Moore, children are so good at learning to speak that almost nothing gets in their way. Learning to speak is far more complicated than learning to walk, yet almost every child figures it out. Even if a child is four years old and incomprehensible to all but his parents, Dr. Moore counsels patience.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.